I installed the latest Sony PS3 firmware (3.0) yesterday, and I thought there was something wrong with my system since the XMB looked…bigger. Anyways, it’s just one of several enhancements put in with the new firmware.

Other changes include an upgrade Friend List UI and preview tabs of sorts for the PSN Store and the What’s New section. I find both of them annoying, and the PSN Store even has a shortcut on both the Game and Video categories. I thought those sections are supposed to show only my stuff.

Anyways, you can now view the time, number of messages received and how many friends are online on the upgraded mini menu on the top right corner of the screen. I guess this update is more on how information is conveyed to the user.

If you haven’t upgraded yet, you can find the new firmware and all the changes it entails over at https://asia.playstation.com/my/en/support/osDetail/71836. Personally I prefer to download the firmware to a USB thumbdrive (flash drive) and then use it to update my PS3. It’s just faster that way.

I can now add inFAMOUS to my list of PS3 games completed this year. The only other game within the list would be Fallout 3. Heh.

Come to think of it, both games actually share a number of similarities. Both are free-roaming games with a strong emphasis on exploration. The ability to move about and do whatever you want is something that I look out for when I’m buying games (don’t ask me why, I just like it that way)

Not only that, both games have a karma-based system. How NPC characters interact with you largely depends on your karma alignment. Become a bad guy and you’ll get hostile reactions from almost everyone.

The similarities between the two games end ironically at the final stages of each game. While inFAMOUS allows the player to continue exploring its sandbox environment, Fallout 3’s final mission is the be-all, end-all gig in which the credits will roll and the game will end, regardless of the player’s actions.

In any case, I’m looking to play the bad guy in BOTH games, considering I finished both as the good guy. I got a feeling that I will have an easier time playing as the bad guy.

P/S: I’m completely aware that the title refers to something that you’ll normally get on the Xbox 360. Despite inFAMOUS being a PS3 exclusive, I chose it instead of the trophy announcement on the PS3 since it sounds way cooler as title.

Not everyday you get to see Soul Calibur related merchandize. You really need to be a fanboy of the upcoming Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny PSP game in order to be wearing this officially licensed Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny t-shirt.

Not only does it look fugly, and it doesn’t have Kratos’ (yup, the dude from God of War is in the game as well) ugly mug to begin with. If his face was on the t-shirt I would actually be compelled to buy the t-shirt as a keepsake.

Anyways, if you are interested, the t-shirt is priced pretty cheap, at USD 9.90, and is available at Play-Asia (click here for details).

Having not played either Call of Juarez and it’s prequel (which came out this year), Bound in Blood, I always wondered whether Juarez was referring to a place or a person. Turns out that the games’ main antagonist is named Juarez, after the town he is from.

There’s a real city on the US-Mexico border by the name of Juarez and this happens to be the most violent city in all of Mexico. According to a BBC News report, inter-gang drug wars have resulted in more than 1000 drug-related deaths so far this year!

Imagine that level of violence occuring in Kuala Lumpur and you can bet it’ll turn into a ghost town. Anyways, read about a pastor’s account on life in Juarez by clicking here.

I like Donkey Kong: King of Swing on my GameBoy Micro. The game is basically a platformer and you have to swing Donkey Kong from one branch to another and use a charged-up swing to leap and hit enemies.

Well, take away the bananas, the trees, leaps, and all the other fun bits, and replace Donkey Kong with a stick and you’ll have SpinGuru on the iPhone. You can probably tell that I don’t really like the game that much.

In fact I find it an exercise in frustration. The premise of the game sounds simple, you have guide a spinning stick, latching on through a series of points from the start point to get to the end point. It’s King of Swing alright, or Spin, for that matter, sans gorilla.

Players are supposed to press a button at the right time in order to attach the stick (it’s spinning all the while) to the next point. But for a game that demands fast reflexes, the controls are really sluggish to the point that it doesn’t register at all and you may end up latching to something else.

Hitting obstacles deducts precious time from your countdown timer (you are given a finite amount of time to complete a course), and since obstacles do not disappear, it’s possible to hit an obstacle (with the stick) multiple times while you are struggling with the sluggish controls.

All these problems detract from an already distilled experience, and I really can’t recommend the game to anyone but masochists. If you are in that category, go ahead and download this 99 cent app from App Store over here. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when you are hurling your phone across the room while trying to pass the TRAINING LEVELS.

Looks like its more 99 cent iPhone game goodness from Konami and this time it’s SILENT HILL: The Escape. The game might just scare you witless but in order for that to happen, you’ll need to take advantage of the 99 cent promotional price period starting from the 3rd to the 5th of September (click here to get the game now).

For more information, check out the following press release.

SILENT HILL: THE ESCAPE NOW AVAILABLE FOR 99 CENTS AT APP STORE

Players Can Now Put a Little Terror in Their Pockets for 99 Cents

Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. today announced that Silent Hill: The Escape is now available for 99 cents on the Apple App store exclusively from September 3 to September 5. Konami’s popular survival horror franchise makes its way onto the iPhone and iPod touch, bringing a terrifying experience to gamers on-the-go.

A first person, 3D shooter, Silent Hill: The Escape allows players to feel fully immersed in a nail-biting experience. A revolver and a dim flashlight is all gamers have to navigate through eerie mazes while trying to locate keys to escape the monster-infested labyrinth. Players can roam the maps with caution and agility but one touch from the gruesome monsters and the game is over. A steady hand and precise accuracy are also crucial to swiftly reload the revolver, as even the slightest tremble will let the bullets go scattering to the floor.

Silent Hill: The Escape is available for purchase for 99 cents from September 3 to September 5 only on the App Store for Apple iPhone and iPod touch.

What a weird day. Most video games sites, like Nine Over Ten 9/10, for instance, rely on PR companies to feed us news on upcoming games and events. Yup, if you think I’m cannibalizing stuff from other sites, think again :). These PR firms can represent big companies such as EA and Konami, smaller publishers and even some indie developers.

In any case, what happens when you receive a press release for a game that is “non-existant”? I received one today for a new iPhone game and I tried looking all over for the game since I needed some media files like pictures to go with the press release. Without pictures, it’s like swallowing pills dry.

But all I got was something similar from the same publisher, but with slightly different titles (Racing and Racers make for two different games, no?) and launch dates, and very different price tags (USD 7.99 vs USD 9.99). Even the App Store link provided in the press release resulted in an error!

So what am I going to do with the press release? I’ll sit on it for the moment, awaiting confirmation from the PR rep. Slow news day today people!

Have you read Green Lantern issue 45? There’s this 2 page spread that made me go LOL whereby Larfleeze (Agent Orange) realises that coveting a Black Lantern power ring wouldn’t be a good thing after all.

I’m a little rusty tonight. It’s nearly two weeks since I last held my DualShock 3 but once I got into my groove in inFamous and straight up, it’s a trophy! Yup, just got a shiny bronze one, called Hotfoot, and getting it involves travelling 25 kilometres while riding the rails.

Considering that the protagonist is a human power cell, he literally glides on rails and that’s actually one of the fastest mode of transportation available in game. With three separate railway tracks on the three different islands in-game, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting the trophy by just going round the tracks for several laps each.

Next up, I’m looking forward to getting the dead drop trophies. Should be easy enough, given that there are some kind souls out there putting up maps of Empire City with everything marked.

It looks like DotA, and it even plays like DotA, but it ain’t DotA. Instead it’s Riot Games’ League of Legends and apparently the guy who worked on DotA: Allstars is on board as well, which explains a lot. The game is actually dubbed the spiritual successor to DotA. Even the maps and graphics look Warcraft III-ish but with a static camera.

In any case, the game is pretty nOOb friendly as far as practice matches are concern. I can actually win, unlike in DOTA where too much micromanagement and confusion over what to buy just kills the entire experience. LoL (really now..) even recommends what items to purchase for a particular hero.

The game is in closed-beta now, and it’s pretty stable although the servers go offline occasionally for maintenance and updates. And it runs amazingly fast on my old Pentium M notebook with 1.5 gigs of RAM and a 128 MB video card. The game also gave an impression on being lag free even though my latency was in triple digits.

Interested? Apply for the closed-beta invite over at the official site (click here)